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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ...in ' The London Review' the following account of the manner in which he had acknowledged the article in 'The Works of the Learned: ...Read MoreThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ...in ' The London Review' the following account of the manner in which he had acknowledged the article in 'The Works of the Learned: '--"It does not appear our author had acquired at this period of his life that command over his passions of which he afterwards makes his boast. His disappointment at the public reception of his Essay on ' Human Nature' had, indeed, a violent effect on his passions in a particular instance, it not having dropped so dead-born from the press but that it was severely handled by the reviewers of those times in a publication entitled ' The Works of the Learned.' A circumstance this which so highly provoked our young philosopher, that he flew in a violent rage to demand satisfaction of Jacob Robinson, the publisher, whom he kept, during the paroxysm of his anger, at his sword's point, trembling behind the counter, lest a period should be put to the life of a sober critic by a raving philosopher." Burton's ' Life of David Hume, ' p. 108. Whether Mr. Ralph Griffiths ever trembled behind his counter at the rage of an angry author, history records not. But no publisher of a review, no reviewer, ever received rougher handling from rival critics, or has endured more obloquy in later times. It is somewhat difficult to form a just estimate of the character of a publisher, who, from the very nature of his principal undertaking, was in a position to excite u good deal of contemporary animosity. Nor is it very easy to determine whether he was a successor of the old race who paid needy writers the wretched wages of their task-work, upon the principle by which " sweating " tailors in our day have been said to accumulate large fortunes. Ralph Griffiths, who established the ' Monthly Review' in 1749, chose for his sign in St. Paul's...Read Less

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